Lush Life and Google's Street View

[John McFetridge]

Richard Price's Lush Life is a fantastic novel for a lot of reasons, not the least of which is its incredible sense of place. The whole book pretty much takes place within a few blocks on New York's Lower East Side.

Now, I've never been to the Lower East Side and the book gave a complete feel of the place, but I was still a little curious to see the area, so I looked up one of the addresses given in the book, 27 Eldridge, on Google Maps and then hit the street view:


View Larger Map Google Street View has been controversial and I really don't know what to make of it, but it was very cool to spend a few minutes, "walking around," in Lush Life. It looks exactly the way the novel feels:

So, what do you think? Is this something you're likely to try? Do you ever have a desire to see even more of a place you read about?

[I. J. Parker]

I might do this if I really, really liked a book. LUSH LIFE was good, but not that good.
In other ways I sometimes get carried away to do additional research. The autobiography of Catherine the Great sent me on a search for autobiographies by her contemporaries. I like autobiographies.
As for google maps: I can see where they are excellent for authors writing about current life in the U.S.
For my purposes, I have to rely on an ancient diagram of Kyoto for Japan, and hit-or-miss on old city plans for 18th century Europe.